Everyone younger than fifty remembers growing up and watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas special. Out of all the Peanuts characters’ antics, from the mouthy Lucy to the simplifying Linus, we remember the ending the best: when Charlie Brown picks out the saddest, smallest tree in the over-commercialized lot. And somehow, this little, pathetic tree brings all the Peanuts characters together and turns out amazing. So amazing that when someone refers to a tree as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, no one even questions the allusion. We all know, and most of us don’t want one.
But what makes us think that one kind of pine tree is better than another? Isn’t it the over-commercialized stores that disgusted Charlie Brown, whose images fill our televisions, newspaper, and Internet ads the moment Thanksgiving approaches? Or is it the tree nursery conglomerates who enjoy charging $35 for a tree that isn’t as tall as Riona?
Yes, those trees are beautiful. Their needles are thoroughly filled out. The fake ones even come in different colors, some pre-lit. There are no gigantic gaps of space, no far-apart branches. Just neatly trimmed, all-in-a-Stepford-Wives-row perfect trees.
And yet again, I must ask: what makes a tree perfect? I can answer that question from our experience today. After ten years of pulling our plastic tree out of its box, fluffing its needles, and seeing its round cone shape, scentless as it may be, fill our living room, we decided to have a dose of reality. Literally.
We rose at dawn to drive up to Realization Point, where one can see Boulder, whose logo is, “Between the mountains and reality.” Boulder Mountain Park rangers checked us in and led us up the snow-covered path. “For those of you who think you might be damaging the forest, it’s just the opposite. You are helping us thin out the smaller trees so that the larger ones can survive, and we can avoid forest fires.” And I thought we were just trying to keep a plastic tree from a landfill!
Isabella played mountain lion, crawling around in her snowsuit on her hands and knees, searching for rabbits. Mythili and Riona helped Grandma and Grandpa pick theirs out. Then we searched for ours. “Feel free to cut down more than one,” the ranger told us. We walked up and down the mountain, scanning our eyes along the tiny Douglas Firs and larger, more scraggly Ponderosas. We settled on a short Douglas Fir for the girls and a much taller Ponderosa for our living room. “We only have Charlie Brown trees here,” one of the rangers had told us as we entered.
And we did. Its branches, in some places, are a foot apart. The ornaments weigh it down, and the heavier ones fall off. The blinking, multicolored lights drape from its limbs like upside down rainbows.
But as Isabella proudly dragged her tree down the mountain, as Riona said to me, “So fun, Christmas tree, Mama,” as we were greeted by a warm fire and hot chocolate and carolers in Santa hats in the stone outdoor shelter, we all knew we had found the perfect tree. It didn’t come from a box or a lot or a corporate commercial vision. It came from the Colorado forest that needed us to take it. It came from the wild, from the earth. From the sun that always shines, the snow that waters it as it melts. It came from our hearts and into our home. The perfect tree.
